Full Text Available
Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.
A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context
Woode-Smith, Caitlin. 2025. Narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context. Unpublished masters thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac....
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1867613800027389952 |
|---|---|
| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Woode-Smith, Caitlin |
| author2 | Van Schalkwyk, Samantha |
| author_browse | Van Schalkwyk, Samantha Woode-Smith, Caitlin |
| author_facet | Van Schalkwyk, Samantha Woode-Smith, Caitlin |
| author_sort | Woode-Smith, Caitlin |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | Stellenbosch University |
| description | Woode-Smith, Caitlin. 2025. Narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context. Unpublished masters thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/132311 |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/132311 |
| institution | Stellenbosch University (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:41:53.663Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| publisherStr | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| spelling | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/132311 A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context Woode-Smith, Caitlin Van Schalkwyk, Samantha Omar, Rabia Abba Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Department of Psychology. Gender-based violence -- South Africa -- Prevention Online social networks -- Social aspects -- South Africa Internet and activism -- South Africa Women social reformers -- South Africa UCTD Woode-Smith, Caitlin. 2025. Narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context. Unpublished masters thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/132311 Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2025. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Despite a growing archive of anti-gender-based violence (GBV) pages on Instagram and research indicating that digital activism is a positive and effective way of challenging GBV in South Africa (SA), minimal research has explored the lives of the digital activists that sustain these movements. Existing literature, which is primarily conducted in the global North, argues that engaging in anti-GBV activism is complex, involving both emotional highs and lows. Furthermore, activists’ unique social identities, such as race, gender, experience of GBV, nationality, and class inform these experiences. This research explored anti-GBV digital activists’ narratives of their experience of engaging on Instagram to challenge GBV in the SA context, and how they made meaning and constructed identities in relation to these narratives. Additionally, whether and how these activists resisted dominant patriarchal scripts through their narratives was analysed. Digital activists were recruited through a combination of purposive and snowball sampling, including sharing a research flyer on social media platforms. Nine participants were interviewed using semi-structured narrative interviews, including questions regarding their journey to activism, what it’s like emotionally and day-to-day engaging in digital activism, and about their hopes for the future of digital activism. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, following which they were analysed using narrative thematic analysis and narrative profiles of each participant’s full account was developed for additional context and nuance. A narrative approach was used to elicit thick descriptions, and detailed accounts, in which the ways experiences are rendered meaningful, and the subject positions constructed in relation to activism could be explored. Analysis was guided theoretically by feminist poststructuralism and intersectionality which welcomed multiple, fluid, and contradictory meanings while paying close attention to the ways in which participants drew from or resisted dominant narratives within existing systems of power and oppression, such as dominant scripts of victimhood, true trauma, and activism in constructing their narratives. Findings indicate the varied and powerful ways that anti-GBV digital activists resist dominant patriarchal scripts in their communities and their activism. Additionally, participants conveyed the deep affective bindings they have to their activism and the communities they help, through their construction of their own subjectivities in relation to their work and these groups. Participants constructions of themselves as activists involved negotiating dominant narratives of activism, feminism, and other aspects of their social positionalities such as race, class, and experience with GBV. Finally, although important to all those interviewed, participants constructed their activism as just part of their identity rather than all encompassing. These findings indicate the powerful ways in which digital activism can be used to undermine patriarchal power, both online and in the lives of those who engage with this content. Moreover, these findings reveal the potential of social media as a site for learning in which individuals’ subjectivities and self-understandings can be shaped and informed by counter-hegemonic narratives, providing new discursive resources for resistance and agency in the face of patriarchal violence and oppression. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar. Masters 2025-06-03T09:52:37Z 2025-06-03T09:52:37Z 2025-03 Thesis https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/132311 en Stellenbosch University 322 pages application/pdf Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| spellingShingle | Gender-based violence -- South Africa -- Prevention Online social networks -- Social aspects -- South Africa Internet and activism -- South Africa Women social reformers -- South Africa UCTD Woode-Smith, Caitlin A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context |
| title | A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context |
| title_full | A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context |
| title_fullStr | A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context |
| title_full_unstemmed | A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context |
| title_short | A narrative exploration of the experiences, meaning making, and identity construction of anti-gender-based violence digital activists in the South African context |
| title_sort | narrative exploration of the experiences meaning making and identity construction of anti gender based violence digital activists in the south african context |
| topic | Gender-based violence -- South Africa -- Prevention Online social networks -- Social aspects -- South Africa Internet and activism -- South Africa Women social reformers -- South Africa UCTD |
| url | https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/132311 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT woodesmithcaitlin anarrativeexplorationoftheexperiencesmeaningmakingandidentityconstructionofantigenderbasedviolencedigitalactivistsinthesouthafricancontext AT woodesmithcaitlin narrativeexplorationoftheexperiencesmeaningmakingandidentityconstructionofantigenderbasedviolencedigitalactivistsinthesouthafricancontext |